PS3 Gossip

[Nikita]

Playstation 3 Gossip

From article :
Analysts looking at patent documents filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office say they suggest a copyright system that would "verify a disc as legitimate, register the disc to that particular console, then wipe out verification data so the disc would be rendered unreadable in other Play-Stations," the Los Angeles Times reported this week.

Just my two cents before i have to go back to yelling at people via email :
This is A.) A bad Idea for new games. B.) a cool concept if used differently.
Just wanted to share, I found it interesting but cant spend too much time writing about it and won't remember later.

I hope you guys find it interesting, do you think they might try to make games 1/2 with this verification and half without- Save $10 buy the only playable on your ps3 version? I just don't really see the point.

[converge]

Re: PS3 Gossip

I think that would highly alienate playstation from the market. With that strategy, friends can no longer exchange physical media let alone bring yours to play on someone else's box.. appearantly video game rental will not exist either? . . any workarounds to aleviate these issues will be the way those interested in pirating games will operate.. making the entire attempt a disadvantage to non-pirates bothering with the PS platform.

I definately applaud Sony for considerable attempt to squash fair use. Expect more.

[TheCotMan]

Re: PS3 Gossip

So, when your playstation breaks, or you have to return it, you need to return the games too?

That could rock. You get several thousand Ps3 users that buys games and play them and return the game console and games for various defects.

Over time, with enough exchanges, and no work around, the station company, and game companies could quickly lose money, or cause prices to rise so much that the competing consoles look like a better value.

Another router? System mods. Maybe it will be possible to disable writes to media. Maybe it will be possible to re-program the consoles to share the same "key" and maybe some other idea will be employed.

[astcell]

Re: PS3 Gossip

There will be a crack available before it officially hits the streets.

[CP99]

Re: PS3 Gossip

Considering Sony has had the patent since 2000, I find it hard to believe they would implement this now and "wipe out the $1 billion annual market for used games and could even prevent someone from playing their games at a friend's house."

[MiracleGrwProxy]

Re: PS3 Gossip

There will be a crack available before it officially hits the streets.

Great. Just what we need. Kiids looking for crack on the streets.

[Voltage Spike]

Re: PS3 Gossip

Considering Sony has had the patent since 2000

That says it all. People floated the rumor of an implementation for the Playstation 2, the Playstation Portable, and now the Playstation 3. It simply isn't going to happen.

We can discuss the idea, but I'm pretty sure it's obvious why no sane company would ever do such a thing (converge hit on a few points).

[skroo]

Re: PS3 Gossip

We can discuss the idea, but I'm pretty sure it's obvious why no sane company would ever do such a thing (converge hit on a few points).

Exactly. Sony may have their heads up their asses, but they know better than to piss off the PS3-game-buying publc.

Funny that they got a patent for this - I remember hearing something similar back in the 8-bit days regarding Atari 2600 games. Wish I could remember the details so I could make it more than anecdotal.

[robosycho]

Re: PS3 Gossip

As it is now the PS3 is pretty pricey compared with the wii and the 360. Besides, what can be deleted can be re-written. If theres a way to wipe the code from the disc, then that also imples an ability to put it back. (Providing of course that the method of removal doesn't frag that part of the disc.) So that leaves it where it was before with kids looking for cracks on the streets. Because cracking a simple serial system should be easy enough. And you can even use the conveniently supplied tech in a hacked PS3 to rewrite it, again unless its fragged. Still their loss.

[TheCotMan]

Re: PS3 Gossip

Exactly. Sony may have their heads up their asses, but they know better than to piss off the PS3-game-buying publc.

Before we saw how Sony initially reacted to their spyware-like windows software on their Audio CDs, I might have agreed. However, coupling the trends demonstrated iover the past 2 decades at Sony with their recent Audio-CD spyware, I don't think an attempt by them to add this to the PS3 or PS4 is out of the question.

The conspiracy theorist in me sometimes wonders if information is purposefully leaked by insiders to people outside, so the company can gauge public opinion about the impact of a decision before they actually commit to an official announcement.

Besides, what can be deleted can be re-written.If theres a way to wipe the code from the disc, then that also imples an ability to put it back. (Providing of course that the method of removal doesn't frag that part of the disc.)

Not too easy with "WORM" disks, and CD-R. As you mention
Though the disk is not "fragged" in that space, it would be tricky to add media material lost in the write process back into the sealed CD/DVD.

It would be kind of like trying to glue sawdust back onto a piece of wood that was cut too short.

Perhaps a market of special adhesive stickers or clear CD-protective laminant with extra material to mask/overlay/replace the space on the disk that is used for unique identification of the console/media, would work, but thiese would create other new problems like precise location of film on disks (through rotation of film and alignment with respect to the plane of the surface of the CD/DVD0 , and proper refraction/tilting to not let the new location of data (as a difference in distance from lense to media material in the CD).

If a lamination/film were used that masked/overlayed/replaced the location of the key storage, then it may be possible to still copy CD/DVD and apply the lamination/film to the copies-- especially if the location of the key is beyond the seek distance of most CD/DVD readers/Writers.

[converge]

Re: PS3 Gossip

This would also be a nightmare for retailers. The manufacturer would be creating a situation where game purchasers could return to stores with open games for refund because it did not read in their system, even though the purchase was theoretically legit. This only opens up further exploitation by pirates that circumvent the anti-copy technology, now able to 'legitimately' return discs after they've copied the game because of the ambiguity of their claim.

I'm curious how the technology actually works now. I would suspect a unique ID on the game disc, a unique ID on the system. A cryptographic challenge upon initial disc insertion to verify the disc is legit that initializes generation of either some hash, keyring, or flag, and then erasure of the key located on the game disc so that the process cannot be duplicated. Sounds like multiple points of failure.

They have two major design problems to overcome.
1) Physical access to the game console that will run the software.
2) A full copy of the media that will run their software.

[renderman]

Re: PS3 Gossip

Before we saw how Sony initially reacted to their spyware-like windows software on their Audio CDs, I might have agreed. However, coupling the trends demonstrated iover the past 2 decades at Sony with their recent Audio-CD spyware, I don't think an attempt by them to add this to the PS3 or PS4 is out of the question.

It should be noted that the different divisions (music/entertainment/electronics) of the company are not always on the same page when it comes to DRM and such technologies. eg. Sony stereo's that could duplicate cassette tapes sold like hot cakes from the electronics division, but were hated by the music division. One could also say the same about the Betamax decision.

Owning a patent does'nt necessarily mean that they will do it. Sometimes companies will patent it, just for the sake of patenting it so they can license it if someone else tries to do it (i.e. Xbox, Nintendo, etc).

[skroo]

Re: PS3 Gossip

The conspiracy theorist in me sometimes wonders if information is purposefully leaked by insiders to people outside, so the company can gauge public opinion about the impact of a decision before they actually commit to an official announcement.

Actually, this is probably a lot closer to the truth - I've been fairly convinced that the rootkit-friendly player Sony Music shipped on their CDs was just them testing the waters of consumer acceptance. None of the major labels have really come up with a good way of doing consumer-friendly DRM, and they are constantly looking for methods that work. Unfortunately for Sony, they picked the one that was most likely to piss off the marketplace and, well, we all know how that worked out for them.

It should be noted that the different divisions (music/entertainment/electronics) of the company are not always on the same page when it comes to DRM and such technologies. eg. Sony stereo's that could duplicate cassette tapes sold like hot cakes from the electronics division, but were hated by the music division. One could also say the same about the Betamax decision.

This is a very good point. With all the hype around DRM for music at the moment, it's worth noting that software companies have traditionally been loath to go to the extremes (with exceptions) that Sony Music did. The difference between, say, a hardware dongle and Sony's player is that one controls access while the other grants external access, respectively. And consumers HATE intrusive technologies.

Owning a patent does'nt necessarily mean that they will do it. Sometimes companies will patent it, just for the sake of patenting it so they can license it if someone else tries to do it (i.e. Xbox, Nintendo, etc).

As a related aside: somewhere, there's someone (probably a lawyer) still receiving a royalty everytime someone manufactures a trackball - the now-defunct Atari, Inc. patented (USPTO #4,496,936) that particular device in 1985. Looking at the diagrams and wording, it could also conceivably be extended to include most non-optical mice.

[John D]

Re: PS3 Gossip

Well it's been over 20 years so maybe the patent died in 2005... still they got to milk it for a while...

-JohnD

As a related aside: somewhere, there's someone (probably a lawyer) still receiving a royalty everytime someone manufactures a trackball - the now-defunct Atari, Inc. patented (USPTO #4,496,936) that particular device in 1985. Looking at the diagrams and wording, it could also conceivably be extended to include most non-optical mice.

[Ridirich]

Re: PS3 Gossip

Well, here's the thing. PS3 is going to want to do several things:

1) Support pre-existing games. This includes all titles from PS and PS2.

2) Act as a sudo-PC. There will be a modem, NIC, keyboard, mouse and even a harddrive involved with this sytem.

3) Allow support of 'Blu-Ray', which will require the drive to read both blue laser discs as well as red laser disks.

4) To be the prefered platform for console games.

Now, when I first read this...I thought to myself 'why would they delete a file on a cd-rom'? They won't. It's a much easier approach to burn the console's GUID onto the cd, then preform an MD5 checksum before running the program. This would mean that the PS3 would also include cd/dvd(and possibly blu-ray) burning software. Not only that, but it would exclude the ability to play all previous titles.

So we are left with thousands of games that can no longer be played and new games that are unusable on another console once the GUID is burned onto the cd. Thus as said before, precluding the ability to get a new console if the PS3 were to break OR allow for returns or trading/selling of used games.

Besides...I don't think Sony wants to be remembered as the first gaming platform to allow the illegal imaging of blu-ray encoded disks.